QED Acquires 19, A Youthful Spin On The Zombie Genre

In your mind, I’d like you to think of all of the different upcoming movies that you hear about, and I’d like you to come up with five of the most common ideas behind them. If you said zombies and young adult novel adaptations, you win! What do you win? About 200 more of my words to read. Hooray! (The other three acceptable answers were: Nicholas Sparks novels, movies where Channing Tatum doesn’t wear thick layers of clothing on his upper body, and movies produced by either J.J. Abrams or Guillermo del Toro.)

QED International is going on out an undead limb to try and combine the worlds of zombies and young adults in a way that hasn’t quite been done before, and could end up becoming something interesting. They’ve pre-emptively acquired19, a pitch from screenwriters Jim Agnew and Sean Keller, who co-wrote Dario Argento’s Giallo together, as well as the upcoming Nicolas Cage thriller Tokarev. The film will be produced by Film 360 and Wonderland Sound and Vision.

Attached to direct is newcomer Jeff Chan, best known for two pretty excellent fan-made shorts for the Call of Duty games, as well as a zombified riff on the “Charlie Bit My Finger” viral video.

The story behind 19 takes place in a world where anyone over the age of 19 automatically joins the ranks of the zombie corps, thus leaving the entire world in the hands of children. It doesn’t sound anything like the young adult/zombie story of In the Flesh or Warm Bodies, and I can understand why QED snatched up the rights to it sight unseen.

They don’t plan on making just one feature, either. The script is being written with a possible trilogy in mind. Barring an absolute box office failure, the producers also intend to turn the film franchise into a series of books. You can’t say they don’t dream big. I hope they don’t lose their head over it.